Our mission there: to shuffle past the show’s 25,000 attendees, scour through the 250,000+ items on display and hunt down that which has WOW! factor.

Great gear, amazing apparel, terrific tents, brilliant backpacks—we’ll feature our favorite finds in alliteration-rich “spotlights,” posts shorter and more bullet-pointy than our typical reviews. Check out the links to those after the jump:

The Skyver Ortovox is a scooter. It has no pedals. It has no seat. The idea is to hike uphill with the foldable Ortovox strapped to your back and then ride downhill. If the terrain flattens up (or even goes uphill a little) you can give yourself a push forward with your foot.

It isn’t a multi-purpose tool that happens to look good. Wenger’s HypeX Jewelry is designed look like jewelry first and foremost. It just happens that these jewelry pieces can also function as screwdrivers or fire starters or wire strippers or the like.

if you spend enough time stomping around in enough water, every “waterproof” shoe will eventually be breached. In the spirit of If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, Columbia introduces their Powerdrain hybrid water shoe with a drainable footbed,

Skijoring, a sport that originated in Norway, involves a dog pulling a human who is on skis.

A new product from Ruff Wear aims to take the “ski” out of skijoring. The appropriately named Omnijore is a dog harness that allows master and pooch to go joring with the former riding atop all manner of moving objects, including bicycles, roller skates or even mountainboards!

On the inside of an item of clothing made by Icebreaker—a wonderful manufacturer of activewear using a merino wool fiber layering system—you’ll find the usual tag with machine washing care instructions.

Below that you’ll find another tag that isn’t so usual, one that contains a unique nine digit code.

The SOS messaging functionality is what people will likely use to justify the cost of the inReach. But what will people really use it for? Twitter, Facebook status updates and text messaging friends. Paired via Bluetooth to a smartphone, the inReach lets users do all three.

When we asked a Noogs representative what the most distinctive feature was of the company’s sunglasses, he removed a pair from his head, bent the frames outward such that they formed a wide arch and asked “Would you do this with other sunglasses?”

Taken with a Sony Nex-5 on Panorama Sweep mode. Click to see full image in a new window. Warning: big file!